Has anime lost its cachet in America?

I had been invited to host a Q&A with renowned “Gundam” creator and sci-fi novelist Yoshiyuki Tomino at The New York Anime Festival. But when my handler and I arrived at the designated room, we found it empty and dark. “Over here,” a staffer called from across the hall. “Too many people.”

The auditorium we entered was cavernous — the largest room in the city’s biggest convention venue, the Jacob K. Javits Center — and its seats were filled from front to back, with a string of fans and photographers lining the perimeter. My handler escorted me backstage to greet Tomino, who was squinting through the curtains as he scanned the room. He turned to me and said: “I am very surprised.”

The standing ovations and thoughtful silences accompanying our onstage conversation seemed to indicate that anime fandom was alive and well in the New York City area. While “Gundam” is a consecrated classic in Japan, it’s hardly the title that brings out the “Pokemon” and “Naruto” legions in the United States. Yet here was a full house for the man who had decades before created one of Japan’s most iconic and beloved giant robots.

That was four years ago. Today, the stand-alone New York Anime Festival (NYAF) is no more. One year after Tomino’s appearance, the event was folded into the now 8-year-old New York Comic Con (NYCC), an umbrella gathering that spans Marvel and DC comics, among others, sci-fi and blockbuster Hollywood movies, television series, novels and artists, game developers, celebrities and cosplayers — with a smidgen of anime and manga on the side.

Last month’s 2013 NYCC drew an estimated 133,000 attendees, up 17,000 over last year, making it by far the largest popular culture event on the U.S. East Coast. During the busiest of the Con’s four days, it was nearly impossible to move through the crowds gathered in the main halls. Escalator travel was uncomfortably intimate, frequently broke down, and often felt close to collapse.

“(We’re) now at the upper limits of what the Javits can hold,” said Peter Tatara, international director of content and marketing for ReedPop, a division of Reed Exhibitions, the producers of NYCC. Reed is looking to expand the Con’s dates and locales, exploring venues in other parts of the city.

But gripes about skimpy anime and manga offerings this year reached me even before I received my press pass. “I’m boycotting (NYCC),” one local Asian-culture journalist and anime and manga aficionado told me. “A lot of us are. They don’t care about anime fans anymore, it’s obvious.”

Statistics bear her out. At this year’s NYCC, a mere 9 percent of the vendor booths, panels and presentations had anything to do with manga or anime, according to Tatara. And the graphic on my press pass was not a doe-eyed “Madoka” schoolgirl or swashbuckling “One Piece” pirate, or even a hard-bodied Marvel “Ironman.” It was furrow-faced Rick, the live-action lead from the U.S. TV megahit, “The Walking Dead.”

“We’ve not done the job we need to do courting (the anime industry),” admitted ReedPop’s global vice president and NYCC show manager, Lance Festerman. Festerman met me in a private office several meters above the Con’s pulsing maze of dealer booths and fans. “I think this year in particular, we’ve had kind of a dearth of anime content. I don’t think we’ve put enough emphasis on developing the relationships that are necessary to land the content that’s going to ‘wow’ things. And that’s a commitment on our part. We need to recommit to that fan base.”

NYAF was launched in the late 2000s, just as the anime industry, and the global economy, were going into a tailspin, Festerman explained. The old model of physical sales was disintegrating, and the new digital-delivery model had not yet been monetized. “(NYAF) just wasn’t working from a business perspective. It was great for the fans, but it wasn’t enough premium content. The show was turning into a raft of (independent) dealers selling cat-ears and swords and kimonos. That’s fine, but that’s not premium. We need screenings, guests, large booths promoting games. Cat-ears are important, but they’re not exclusive content.”

After-hour chatter among anime-industry veterans and journalists in bars adjacent to the Javits bordered on being bitter. “One of the biggest artists in the business offered to come this year,” a prominent editor told me, “but the NYCC staff had no idea who he was and dropped the ball.”

Both Festerman and Tatara are keenly aware of the growing disenchantment among anime fans in the U.S., and both separately assured me that Reed will refocus its efforts on anime and manga fans, producers and publishers for NYCC 2014. But they are also focusing on other markets. Tatara recently traveled to Dubai and Singapore to explore opportunities in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. And Festerman promises a big announcement before the end of this year of a Reed-produced Japanese pop-culture convention in Asia — most likely, China.

“We took our video-game expo, PAX, to Melbourne this July and sold it out three months before the show,” says Festerman. “We’re moving on from the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) economies to the TIME (Turkey, India and the Middle East) economies, but we like the BRICs, too. We’re active in all of those spaces with three buckets — broad-based Comic Cons, Game Cons and Japanese Pop Culture.”

Reed’s strategies for tapping fans beyond the North American market echo much of the talk in and around Tokyo. The rising wealth and consumer passion for Japanese culture has anime producers and manga publishers focusing on fans in New Delhi and Shanghai over New York and San Diego. Officials at METI, the Japanese government ministry overseeing the recently launched, ¥50 billion “Cool Japan” fund, which I’ve mentioned before in this column, told me that they’re now more excited by promotional activities in Singapore than in San Francisco. And Crunchyroll.com, a successful online anime portal that debuted its digital manga site two weeks ago, is fast developing non-English products to expand its reach.

“Anime and manga are a priority for (NYCC) in 2014,” says ReedPop’s Tatara, “and we’re starting conversations on commitment, content and talent before this year’s end.” Perhaps. But like the aging and overstuffed Jacob K. Javits Center, the North American market for Japanese pop culture may have hit its upper limit.

The “cat ears, swords and kimonos” comment seems poignant. Where I’m from, we don’t even have the kimono venders. Yet we had an anime-dominant convention just this summer that was open to the full spectrum of Comic-Con events. This “exclusivity” he claims was necessary is only ever harmful to customers, and is only beneficial to exploitative venues. He’s taking the Lowest-Common-Denominator, or Wal-Mart approach to selling convention tickets, trying to broaden his customer base while eliminating the niches.

NYC is big enough to have several anime conventions a year. NYCCC is welcome to try to appeal to the anime customer base, but you have to remember that going to NYCCC for a great anime experience is like going to Wal-Mart for high art.

japancritical

If you are over sixteen and still like anime, you are intellectually stunted, IMO.

Chiefy707

I feel it has except for the truly diehard. Growing up in the 80’s I was exposed to anime like Voltron and especially Robotech (which yes I know was a hybrid of 3 different series). Those a gen older than me had Gatchaman, Speed Racer and the like. I feel the difference is that there really is no longer an deep, story driven anime that an open minded American adult would want to watch on mainstream TV.

kregano

The main problems with anime in the US are that Japan’s way of handling
anime licenses prevents a lot of mainstream exposure, all the bad
stereotypes of anime from the early 00s are still in the minds of most
people, and there isn’t enough anime content that appeals to broader
audiences. I think it says a lot that there have been only TWO simuldubs
ever and one of those is premiering in January (Space Dandy). Japan’s
insistence on ridiculous US dub release delays and license fees that
prevent licensors from getting high quality voice actors/directors
encourage piracy and the view that anime is lower tier product than US
animation.

That said, the fact that all the hyperbolic criticism
of anime from the 00s (based on hentai anime with tentacles and lots of
lolicon) is still in the minds of most people means that anime is going
to be marginalized by the public unless there’s a sudden surge in
“serious” anime (like Ghost in the Shell) and a dramatic decrease in
sexualized content in anime across the board. The former is unlikely
because of the poor financial structure of the anime industry, which
makes it hard to produce original works that have little appeal to
Japanese fans, and latter is unlikely because the anime industry
survives in Japan by appealing to the tastes of a tiny niche of people.

This
partially explains why there isn’t as much content with mainstream
appeal, but the main issue is that there isn’t enough content aimed at
adults, with adult characters in it. 75%+ of every anime season is some
variation of high school students doing something in/around a high
school, which doesn’t appeal to US viewers because we don’t have
nostalgia for high school and are expect our action heroes to be adults
(because of movies and logic). That said, there’s also a severe lack of
scifi and fantasy action shows, which built a lot of the anime fanbase
in the late 90s and early 00s. Those genres were fairly mainstream and
got great time slots on Toonami, but without them, there’s not a lot of
content that immediately grabs the positive attention of a US audience
that isn’t already familiar with anime. Without that kind of content on
US TV, you’re not going to build a fanbase that can be a major
financial/fan presence at these large cons.

http://stephen.zreomusic.com Stephen J. Weber

This would’ve been my fourth year in a row at NYCC if I weren’t out of the country as it was going on. With that in mind, I can’t vouch for anime content this year, but last year it was truly pathetic, as if it was an afterthought. No cosplay masquerade and I don’t recall any exclusive anime screenings either (I may be wrong about that as it’s really easy to miss what’s going on at NYCC). I think the highlight of last year for me was Danny Choo’s panel. Other than that, it was really a sad year for anime (although Good Smile Company did finally have a booth).

However, I don’t think I can really fault Reedpop for the poor anime turn out. It was, sadly, the first year without Bandai, who in previous years seemed to bring a ton of anime screening with them. The top floor of the convention center was closed for construction again, which had added a ton of space in 2011 for anime (artist’s alley and a huge stage were up there). Given that NYCC now takes up the entire center, that really put the show at a crunch for space last year. Panel rooms were smaller. Stages were put where ever they could fit. Escalators became stairs by mid-Friday. And Saturday… well, let’s just say good luck getting around. In short, NYCC has some growing pains, and I don’t think that’s any secret.

With that in mind, I’m not quite ready to say anime has lost it’s cachet in the US. As far as I know, Otakon and AX are still doing very well – and perhaps that’s because they’re dedicated anime conventions. NYCC never was, even if it was NYCC/AF in 2010. I am aware NYAF was previously a seperate event. If you take a look at Kickstarter, I’d say anime is definitely alive and well in the US. Kickheart became the first crowdfunded anime in history (at least that I’m aware of) and collected $50k over its goal. The Time of Eve Blu-ray Kickstarter did extremely well. So did Little Witch Academia 2.

One thing I have seen a decline in with anime in the US is its presence in retail stores. Best Buy has maybe a shelf or two of it. FYE has a decent amount, but hardly anything recent. Borders was my go-to store. Now it’s RightStuf!, because I can’t find what I want in retail stores. I’d say it’s drastically easier to find anime in stores here in Australia (where I am at the moment) than in the US. Two years ago, I’d call it about equal.

Long story short, I think anime in the US is still alive and well. It has taken a beating in recent years though, but I don’t see it going out without a fight.

James Leung

The popularity of anime is a difficult metric to measure, and has very little relation to market potential. Do you count actual sales, TV viewership, or con attendance? Even if you could measure it, can you demonstrate that popularity will lead to sales that funnel money back to original creators such as artist, writers, and animators?

The early American anime market (1990s-2000s) was largely based on the sale of physical media such as DVDs and books. At the time, companies eked out a small profit. Today most people have transitioned to streaming and online digital media which doesn’t generate anywhere near the profit margins of the old physical media. The actual dollar amount per consumer is counted in cents. So, one needs to look into ancillary product markets such as merch (messenger bags, t-shirts, etc).

The only way to capitalize on the ancillary product market is the development of “killer apps” or big anime properties with mainstream potential (eg Akira, Evengelion, Spirited Away). Every year the industry swings for the fences but usually settles for a walk. Since the industry cannot maintain a regular diet of blockbusters, the ancillary product market is hit-and-miss.

Some companies believed that online streaming will lead to a wider market and save the anime industry. However, this is hardy the case. The only outcome of online streaming of anime and manga is the true democratization of the all media. In a unified playing field, the companies with the most financial leverage wins. The big boys (Warner Brothers, Disney Parent Company, Sony) will continue to dominate the market.

Therefore, Anime was tossed into larger pool of media properties such as American comics, Hollywood blockbusters, TV shows, music, and nostalgic properties. Anime doesn’t compete for eyeballs on FYE’s animation DVD rack or a spot on Cartoon Channel; there going head-to-head with every other media company in the streaming cloud entertainment market. So instead of competing with Disney Animation and Fox Kids, they’re facing off with the Iron Man films, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Skyrim, and Lady Gaga. Following this trend, I’m not surprised that NYCC and SDCC is also following the broader and bigger media properties to make bank.

I predict the anime market will retreat into the niche collector’s market similar to print comics. The anime properties will be seen as a farm league for adaption into larger media franchises like Pacific Rim, Transformers, and Inception. It also wouldn’t surprise me if larger media heavy weight start to purchase whole anime companies strictly for their media licenses.

Sargonarhes

I think this depends on where you go and how the market is saturated. The NYAF is held in Oct. Keep in mind that just 2 months before that is only the largest anime event on the east coast, Otakon. If anime fans don’t have the disposable income to spend on NYAF it’s because they spent most of it already at Otakon. Which will be moving into a larger venue in Washington DC in 2017. As a similar example the Pittsburgh Comic Con is much smaller than what it use to be, and it had anime rooms and dealers to boot, however it’s anime part started dieing off. Not because it didn’t offer anime fans anything, but because 2 weeks prior to the PCC was the anime con Tekkoshocon. Which started to eat up any anime business the PCC had.

So what we might be seeing here is a saturated market for comic and anime conventions.

krazehh

People who say Anime is dying in the U.S clearly are lying to themselves or live under a rock. With AX being the highest attended anime convention as well as Otakon doing extremely well. The fans will always love Anime. And There will always be NEW anime people will latch onto. SnK, Free and Kill la Kill are INSANELY popular at the moment. It’s true, like any other fanbase, the anime fans can have interests outside of Anime. But Anime is STILL a market.

aefj

You know America is a huge country that exists outside of New York, have you even been outside of New York for conventions??

lasolitaria

It’s actually an analogy rather than a simile.

Anyway, the implication -which you’re so sloppily attempting to weasel out of- all over your comment is that both NYCCC and Walmart share the characteristics of being mainstream (no niches) and mundane (no high art), as opposed to anime. Yet anime does too.

I must confess that I can’t, for the life of me, figure out what “great anime experience” means or how is it any different from whatever NYCCC offers. I can only say that, whatever it is, it’s also not even remotely comparable to high art.